One of the first things you learn when studying the “Civil Rights Movement” is that calling it the “Civil Rights Movement” is a bit of a misnomer. There was not a single movement, just as there was not a single leader. The multiple civil rights movements that evolved independently and yet concurrently during the 1950s and 60s were led by men and women who shared a common belief in equality and social justice.

As historians move beyond the narrative of a single story we begin to encounter new stories and new truths. The Reverend Cecil Augustus Ivory is a name...

I, your Records Archivist David Staniunas, was back in Portland Oregon last week -- in 2015 I delivered presentations at the PC(USA) Polity Conference; in 2016 I was one of nine PHS staffers to support the work of the General Assembly -- this time for the annual conference of the Society of American Archivists, and I was able to spend a little time in and around the historically African American neighbohood known as Albina.

On July 7, 1968, James Baldwin took the dais at the World Council of Churches meeting in Uppsala, Sweden, the headline speaker of a panel address called "White Racism or World Community?"

In 2003, a set of two open-reel audio tape recordings of the event came to the Presbyterian Historical Society via the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. In celebration of the 49th anniversary of the event, we'd like to share an excerpt from his speech about the passage from petitioner to revolutionary undertaken by Stokely Carmichael.